I have been playing Call Of Duty MW quite a lot lately and i really enjoy it but i couldn't help but notice some flaws with the menus. Apparently the menus were worst when the game was released but i'm writting that already 8 months after its release. Now be aware that i played the PS4 version and that this "review" is mostly focused on usability and not aesthetic.
The first thing i noticed when i started playing the game is how everything has the "new" icon. It is everywhere, especially when you just start playing the game. You unlock equipments and camos on your weapons so quickly that you keep getting signs that there is something new in your inventory. As someone who likes having things clean and tight i found it very annoying to always have these appearing. This issue is also present with the different game modes and in the store. As you can see on the image above, most of the modes still have this green square to show that something is new there. Now it is really weird because i even played some of these modes before and the sign didn't dissapear. Basically you start the game and everything is considered "new". So what isn't ?
Now, talking about the store, where new things always appear (literally since new packs rotate quite often and so there is new content). I'm sure the sign to show that something is new, next to the store menu surely has some marketing/sales impact. If you want to increase your in game sales, you have to bring people to the store one way or another. The thing is that you can't just move over all the newly added packs and remove the "new" statut. To properly remove it you have to open each bundle one by one (which mean you need to click on it and hence you see more details of the packs). Considering the amount of packs it would take quite some time to do that. Now something else that they also put in place in the store is the "free bundle". Well thank you for that. But they don't just throw it at you when you open the game. You basically have to search for it amongst the others bundles in the store. It happened more than once that i would have to go through the whole store more than once to finally find it.
The store interface is also bad at giving enough visibility. You can only properly see one row of bundles at a time because the image in the middle of the screen takes so much space.
Now i personally found the "weapons" menu a bit confusing at first. To me it doesn"t portray what is really insidee. Something like Armory or Arsenal would cover more than just weapons. This menu contains much more that just the loadout and the weapons.
Something else about the loadouts and weapons i found confusing is the attributes. On top of damage, range and fire rate you have control and accuracy. But was defines accuracy ? Is it the stability attribute (equipement don't mention accuracy but instead aiming stability ?) Then what really differenciates aiming stability and Control ? Ho wait... Is control actually the recoil stabilization and recoil control ? I don't know ! Well i think now i know but, it took some time and some googling. The main issue is that equipement and attributes (in the lower left on the image below) don't use the same terminology. So an equipement would provide recoil control and aiming stability but then you can see these in the weapon stat. Control is recoil and accuracy is stability. Then where does "recoil stabilization" go ?
Then you have mobility. Which increases your movement but what about aim down sight speed ? Is it also affected by mobility and weight ? The heavier the weapon is the slower it is to aim ? Maybe, i'm not sure. That would mean that a 50 round mags would make you faster (running and aiming) than with 60 round mags i guess. It is just not shown anywhere. I feel that you sort of have to guess what the different attributes mean and how to maximize them.
Something else that led to quite some discussion was the FMJ perk. It says in the description that it increases the bullet penetration against equipement and killestreaks. But it also shows an increase in damage in the weapon stats. So is it both ? Does the weapon increase penetration but also normal damage against enemies ? The game doesn't tell you. But the game shows stats that are not accurate per se.
Then you have to unlock equipements on your guns. I don't know why but sometimes it would work fine and i can see the next 4 items i'm about to unlock.
Then sometimes i can only see one and the 4 others are actually just equipments i have already unlocked (top right corner). Not sure though if it is a bug or not.
Something else i didn't like is how they called the guns. Basically everything in the store or in the battle pass are named by with the type of guns and it's then with the radio alphabet which corresponds to the place it has in the list of guns. I mean why ? Why can't you just say It's an AK-47 for exemple ? Why say that it is the light machine gun charlie instead ? Especially because often the images don't make it easy for you to see which gun it is (like the half cropped gun below) and, it is every harder when the gun has some strange camo and equipement on it.
Now about the missions and challenges. the contrast for the progression bar is really not good (if you run some contrast checker you would see that it doesn't comply with the WCAG guidelines). Especially if you play on console and you are further away from the screen. It's also kind of sad they don't let you preview all the rewards you can get from a set of missions. If you click R3 to preview the loot items you then only see the 2 items showned on the right (so it is not so useful either). What they could have done is when you click on R3, you get a sort of progression bar with the different objectives at different points and with each showing the rewards. It would then give a good preview of everything you can only if you do these missions and in which order without having to click on each mission and to remember what comes before and after.
Ho and the contrasts are not better when the bar is full btw. It is just blue.
Now, i don't why they didn't put the full description of each mode always visible when you move over. As you can see the text moves up and down (even tho there is only one extra line that would fit in the space dedicated). First they could have increases the space for the text and leave a static text. Or if they wanted it to move it could have a different movement. Here it strangely starts at the bottom or in the middle. Then it abrupty jumps back to the top. The clearest way to do it would be to have it start at the begining and it could just continue going down and restart, like a loop (and not stop at the bottom and then fades).
That's it for the menus !